


Wrong Side of Life

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two people thought dead dance in a Muggle club under the eyes of a madman and a paranoid retiree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrong Side of Life

_I dance where the darker crowds dance  
In the pitch black clubs in the clove-stained trance_

Watching the couple in the center of the dance floor, Alastor was almost tempted to think someone had actually managed to get a drug of some sort into his flask, no matter how vigilant he prided himself on being. Certainly if anyone else had told him who they were, he'd never have believed them. Never mind that both of them were supposed to be dead, and the dancers he was watching were nothing like any ghost he'd ever met. That they'd managed to fake their deaths, in fact, came as no surprise when one knew their abilities and personalities.

Nor was it the same instant denial that he knew the man's former students would have, that Snape could possibly have a relationship of any sort with a woman. Or that the woman had to be drugged or cursed. Not if Snape valued his life, which Alastor had no doubt was his most precious possession.

He would have, at least, before he'd caught a stray scrap of conversation that had brought him here. The expression on the normally saturnine man's face, along with the body language that practically screamed that anyone who wanted the woman would have to go through him made him re-evaluate that assessment.

Snorting quietly, Alastor reached for his flask, taking another sip, continuing merely to watch from his relatively safe vantage point at one end of the bar. To the wizarding world, the two dancing in the middle of a Muggle club were dead, and so long as they didn't hurt anyone, he wasn't inclined to tell anyone he'd found them.

Even if anyone would believe him.

* * *

_This our time, the nights our day  
We'll dance this fading life away_

"We're being watched." Hepzebah tilted her head back against Severus' shoulder, baring the line of her throat to his appreciative gaze. "He's back again."

"He won't tell anyone what he knows," came the murmured reply, his lips brushing the curve of her ear. His voice as much felt in the rumble against her back as heard.

"I wouldn't imagine anyone would believe him." Hepzebah rolled her shoulders, her hips twisting in small movements in time to the music around them. "Anymore than they'll believe our other lurking observer."

"He won't take it on himself to do anything, either." Snape chuckled, a dark and amused sound that made her lips curl in a delighted smile. "You know me better than that, Eris."

She laughed aloud, no less dark in her amusement than he in his, and twisted in his arms to twine her hands together behind his neck. Pressed as close to him as robes and their constant audience would permit as she smiled up at him. "You are a delightfully vicious man, Severus. What did you do to the poor sod?"

"Nothing I'll tell you with an audience." Severus smirked as she pouted, his fingers digging into her hips as he kept them in the center of the dance floor, safely away from those who might do something foolish if they were permitted to do more than watch. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, barely audible over the music that pounded around them, "Perhaps when we find a subject for you, I'll show you."

Eyes bright with delight, Hepzebah used her grip on his neck to pull herself up on her toes, kissing him fiercely. Feeling the impotent rage from her own pawn in their game at the back of her mind as she did, and merely laughing as she pulled away, letting herself get lost in the music once more.

* * *

_I've been to the darker side of hell  
Played with your fear and enjoyed it well_

He hated watching them, no matter where it was, but he didn't dare let her out of his sight, not again. She'd died once, and she was back, and he wouldn't make the mistake of letting her die again. He didn't like letting Snape have her, but she'd not given him a choice. His angel and his demon, all wrapped up in a dark shell that he'd always thought fragile. Still did, even if she looked less so than when she'd lived her first life with him.

No, his precious, beloved wife had changed since her resurrection, become stronger. He knew she'd told him she'd never died, but he'd seen it. He'd buried her, went to her grave every night while she was dead. Slept there sometimes, simply to be closer to her. Watched her ghost at her writing desk every day, and mourned that he couldn't have saved her.

But still she was his, still haunted him even though she was alive again, still played with him as she always had. Wrapped him around her dainty fingers, and he let her. He was nothing without his dark angel, his delicate demon. No matter what games she played, pretending to belong to someone else. She would come back to him, he had simply to wait and cherish her as he always had, and she'd come back to him.

She had to. After all, hadn't she come back to life for him?

* * *

_I run on the wrong side of life  
I'm the one you feared when you wooed your wife_

It hadn't been his ideas that had saved his life in the end, and Severus knew that well as he pulled Hepzebah close to him, hiding them from any prying eyes simply by doing as those around them were. It didn't make him any less smug about having fooled the entire wizarding world, bar two, into thinking him dead, sacrificed to defeat the Dark Lord. Not when it left him free to indulge in the darker nature he'd had to hide ever since he had been caught by Dumbledore and his precious Order.

A soft hum drew his wandering thoughts back to his dance partner, the woman who'd made the Dark Arts more than simply a tool to him. More than something to be used to achieve his goals, but an end in themselves, a pleasure and an addiction like nothing else. Encouraged him to explore them to their fullest extent - coercion, pain and death. Perhaps simplified for the hurried artist in the Unforgivables, but that wasn't the end of them, or even the beginning. Not for true artistry.

True artistry took time and an appropriate canvas. One like Alastor Moody, entirely paranoid, refining security to as much an art as Severus had refined his own use of the Dark Arts. Or like Nott, as Hepzebah had chosen for her own masterpiece. Impotent to stop them, in the end, the both of them. One raging in silence and madness, the other so utterly obsessed and paranoid that he might as well be mad.

**Author's Note:**

> The characterization of Nott and Snape are taken from the characters as played by R. in a long-dead game, as are the relationships between Nott, Snape, and Hepzebah. The lyrics that head each POV segment are from the Abney Park song _The Wrong Side_ , as is the title.
> 
> The story has been sitting on my hard drive for months, and is as finished as it will ever get, nor do I have any intentions of expanding on it in another story.


End file.
